Is there free will?
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You will hear many say "god has a plan for you". If that's the case........................then there's no free will as it's been predetermined. You're just living it out. I'm an atheist anyway.If you are religious then no as God has predetermined everything.
Is that true?
My catholocism is a little rusty, but IIRC, God knows all (and thus knows the decisions we will make, how our futures will go, etc etc), but not that he made those decisions for us as part of his grand plan.
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You have to be an atheist, cuz God loves the Bills!
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Let's put it this way. You believe in god and go to him or go to hell. That's not "free will". That's ultimatum. Free will would be "would you like chicken, steak or turkey on that sandwich?" You're just given 2 choices and the latter being a life of "hellfire" if you don't comply. How is that free will?If you are religious then no as God has predetermined everything.
Is that true?
My catholocism is a little rusty, but IIRC, God knows all (and thus knows the decisions we will make, how our futures will go, etc etc), but not that he made those decisions for us as part of his grand plan.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."
Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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So much so that he endows them with crappy QB's, WR's and a beat up LeSean McCoy who can't stay healthy now. At least your TE is decent.Chael2dot0 wrote: »
You will hear many say "god has a plan for you". If that's the case........................then there's no free will as it's been predetermined. You're just living it out. I'm an atheist anyway.If you are religious then no as God has predetermined everything.
Is that true?
My catholocism is a little rusty, but IIRC, God knows all (and thus knows the decisions we will make, how our futures will go, etc etc), but not that he made those decisions for us as part of his grand plan.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
You have to be an atheist, cuz God loves the Bills!
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Prediction modeling also argues free will doesn't really exist. Sample sizes don't have to be that big, a political survey of a few hundred people can predict pretty closely how we will vote. Medical surveys can predict our lifespan within a margin of error, and our own texting apps have gotten pretty good at predicting our word choices. Across the board, the choices we freely make can be predicted with great accuracy.
To me, someone or something being "predictable", may still have free will. I'm free to order whatever I like when I walk in the deli every morning, but the cook at the deli almost always correctly predicts what I'm going to order.
But I'm still free to ask for a bowl of tofu instead of my usual bacon and eggs. It's just highly unlikely that I would ever make such a choice.
Maybe, but given how you felt on that day, you would have chosen the same thing if you relived the day over 1000 times, as such it was the only thing you could have chosen at the time, based on what you craved, like, etc. and on that day you had to choose that, whether it felt like you had another choice or not.... that is the "illusion of free will"
Agreed. Take away the prediction modeling and just look at aggregate research. We would have never predicted that the most common online passwords would be "password" or "12345". We don't share passwords with others, so we all think we freely choose them. Obviously we tend to pick the easiest thing, but why don't we choose "54321"? We all had the choice...the illusion of choice.
Help me out here please. If I have the option to choose "54321" or "password" or "Hyxh&*^" but I (and many others) choose to use "password", how is that evidence that free will is an illusion? I'm not following your thought process.
Do bees have free will? Most would argue they don't. Their "job" in bee society can be determined by their species and genome. Although bees are considered to live highly complex social lives, they follow the orders of the queen. No bee wakes up and says, "Today I want to be a worker bee!" But we only know this based on their predictive behavior. We can't talk to bees, so we evaluate their predictable behavior and from that, assume a bee doesn't wake up and "freely choose" to do what they do. We assume bee brains aren't even consciously aware, even though we can't clearly identify the "consciousness" on any animal. Humans are way more complex, so there are way more variables. Considering that we can predict incredibly complex behaviors of humans, can we argue that our "will" is any more free than a bee's?
I'm no apiarist, but I would imagine a bee has a choice to make on some level. If one bee, somewhere in the world decides to make a choice to do something outside of his established bee expectations, then I would argue that bees DO in fact have free will. I don't have enough data on this yet though.
I'm still not seeing the connection though, between being able to predict a likely behavior, and the assertion that because we can usually predict what will happen therefore the subject must not be free to make a choice outside of the predicted behavior.
What study would you conduct to prove someone does have free will? Given that our behaviors are predictable, how would you measure free will outside of the self-reported “it feels like it” from a decision-maker?0 -
free will is whatever you want it to be. we are all free to do anything we want, as long as we want it badly enough. "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" etc. i don't believe in destiny.
do we have it? i think so.
i don't see anybody telling me specifically not to do something (and sometimes even then) then i'll do it- if it's what i want.
i suppose there is a "god" of sorts over those decisions though- its the God of the Price and the Cost.
everything you do has a cost to it i think. sometimes its a tiny amount- like maybe just a bit of your time.
then again- it could be something terribly expensive you want. it could cost your mind or your heart or a lifetime.
maybe everything you have.
you just have to sit down and talk it over with the God and see if that's really what you want before you make it happen.1 -
So much so that he endows them with crappy QB's, WR's and a beat up LeSean McCoy who can't stay healthy now. At least your TE is decent.Chael2dot0 wrote: »
You will hear many say "god has a plan for you". If that's the case........................then there's no free will as it's been predetermined. You're just living it out. I'm an atheist anyway.If you are religious then no as God has predetermined everything.
Is that true?
My catholocism is a little rusty, but IIRC, God knows all (and thus knows the decisions we will make, how our futures will go, etc etc), but not that he made those decisions for us as part of his grand plan.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
You have to be an atheist, cuz God loves the Bills!
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
Personal foul...low blow...
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Let's put it this way. You believe in god and go to him or go to hell. That's not "free will". That's ultimatum. Free will would be "would you like chicken, steak or turkey on that sandwich?" You're just given 2 choices and the latter being a life of "hellfire" if you don't comply. How is that free will?If you are religious then no as God has predetermined everything.
Is that true?
My catholocism is a little rusty, but IIRC, God knows all (and thus knows the decisions we will make, how our futures will go, etc etc), but not that he made those decisions for us as part of his grand plan.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him."
Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
I have adult children. I have raised them, loved them, and provided for them. But I don't force them to love me, don't make them text me, don't force them to visit me. They do these things out of love for me. That's their choice. If they reject me, if they refuse to talk to me or love me, I will still love them. But they will have rejected me out of their own choice, and won't take part in the communion that I so achingly want to have with them.
But I'm not going to argue religion on this board. I'm just refuting the person who said that "religious people don't believe in free will." Catholics (like me, by the way) will argue that predestination is a diabolical conclusion of flawed reasoning. If there was a god who made souls who were destined for hell through no agency of their own, we should reject that god as evil.1 -
For the religious.....if god has gifted man with free will, which allows him to sin, does god pull back this gift when a soul goes to heaven? If he didnt, wouldnt heaven look a lot like earth with man making poor and sinful decisions even while in gods kingdom?4
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kindalikevelma wrote: »Well I ate sorbet in the bathtub tonight so there’s your answer.
What flavor? Y'know...for...science.
Passionfruit.
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Free will doesn't exist. Free will is the ability to have acted differently. For free will to exist we need to be aware of everything that is influencing our actions and in control of every influence. This is not possible.
Every action that is because you either want to or you are forced to. You can't control your wants and you can't control being forced.
I think what conflates this argument is the brain functions of control. Being self aware gives us the illusion that we chose what we want, therefore feel like the choice was made freely. But again we can't control our wants and are just acting in accordance with something that is out of our control.
You can only do what you want.
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For the religious.....if god has gifted man with free will, which allows him to sin, does god pull back this gift when a soul goes to heaven? If he didnt, wouldnt heaven look a lot like earth with man making poor and sinful decisions even while in gods kingdom?
God and man VS God Man.3 -
tinkerhellraiser wrote: »Free will doesn't exist. Free will is the ability to have acted differently. For free will to exist we need to be aware of everything that is influencing our actions and in control of every influence. This is not possible.
Every action that is because you either want to or you are forced to. You can't control your wants and you can't control being forced
I think what conflates this argument is the brain functions of control. Being self aware gives us the illusion that we chose what we want, therefore feel like the choice was made freely. But again we can't control our wants and are just acting in accordance with something that is out of our control.
You can only do what you want.
pretty much the defense of every serial killer who decided to represent himself
And basically denys that anyone does anything for anyone but themselves, which is incorrect.2 -
To even be able to ask this and wonder about it is testament enough in it.2
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Great episode on Through the Wormhole about this...
They cited studies that show we actually make decisions as much as 15 seconds before we are even consciously aware a decision has in fact been made...
If we are all really just a biological reaction of past experiences to the world around us, then no we don't have free will, it's all fate and everything has already been decided...
The new philosophy is that everything is happening at the same time... Einstein believed that all of time exists at this very moment...
If this is true then our fate is already decided and we are just along for the ride, experiencing everything frame by frame...
But maybe our freewill has already been laid out and the path you embark on is ultimately the path you've chosen, but the decision is simply made on a different plane of existence, rather than at that moment...
However if you accept the philosophy that I am nothing more than the universe manifesting and observing it self as a human...
Then again no the decision is not ours but is made by the universe as a whole for the sake of bringing balance...
I once read Zen in the Art of Happiness and the author states, everything that happens is the best possible thing that could happen because it's the will of the universe and the universe is not going to harm itself but rather benefit itself...
I try to believe this but I prefer to believe the universe is not trying to reach a state of nirvana, but rather balance... That is why we have good and bad
This is where I get the nerdiest lol, and with history...4 -
I had a dream last night that we were alien pawns or possibly avatars1
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For the religious.....if god has gifted man with free will, which allows him to sin, does god pull back this gift when a soul goes to heaven? If he didnt, wouldnt heaven look a lot like earth with man making poor and sinful decisions even while in gods kingdom?
I think this is a fair question, and will attempt an answer. We don't really have visibility into what heaven will be like; we just have hints and echoes. We can't imagine it or understand it in our present condition except darkly.
My understanding that humans are made for communion with God in heaven. Once we have entered into this communion, we will be where we truly belong and where we truly fit. We will be the purified versions of ourselves, free from even the desire to sin, experiencing the beatific vision continually. Sin represents disordered desire for something that is good; all disorder will gone.1 -
For the religious.....if god has gifted man with free will, which allows him to sin, does god pull back this gift when a soul goes to heaven? If he didnt, wouldnt heaven look a lot like earth with man making poor and sinful decisions even while in gods kingdom?
I think this is a fair question, and will attempt an answer. We don't really have visibility into what heaven will be like; we just have hints and echoes. We can't imagine it or understand it in our present condition except darkly.
My understanding that humans are made for communion with God in heaven. Once we have entered into this communion, we will be where we truly belong and where we truly fit. We will be the purified versions of ourselves, free from even the desire to sin, experiencing the beatific vision continually. Sin represents disordered desire for something that is good; all disorder will gone.
I guess my thought is you don't really make decisions in heaven, you don't really have an impact on anything anymore. It's not reincarnation, you don't have a body. Its where you soul is resting, you are aware, content, but not capable.1 -
The lack of free will would be an illusion since the only limits we place on ourselves are the ones were we fear the consequences or possible consequences.1
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No there isn't, simply because there're victims & they obviously don't posses the free will, to choose not to be a victim!0
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We are just witnesses to our decisions5
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